Practical Use of Personal Buoy System for Fishery Using Sensor Network Technologies

This report proposes a new mode for oceanic observations that can be conducted to "one buoy per fisherman". In response to requests from the scallop cultivation fishermen, a new personal buoy based on sensor network technologies has been developed at a price of approximately US$ 1,000 each for seawater temperature observations. The network currently being developed for use by individual fishermen will use these relatively inexpensive, personal buoys to record and share information about the ocean water temperatures reported by his buoy with other fishermen. The buoy presented in this report is not only for providing users with an actual visualization of the seawater temperature distribution, but also given the useful information for the prediction against the suddenly change of the seawater temperature to fishermen by sharing the information at numerous locations and multiple layers. Ten buoys have already been installed at locations on the coast of Hokkaido, mainly in scallop cultivation sea areas.